Tuesday's horrific crash on I-77 in Mooresville, claiming the life of a 21-year-old Huntersville man and critically injuring his 30-year-old Mooresville passenger, was a grim realization of the longtime highway safety slogan, "Speed Kills."
The N.C. Highway Patrol estimates the Mustang the two men were riding in was traveling in excess of 100 mph at about 2:15 a.m. when it sideswiped another vehicle, went out of control and flipped on the interstate.
One hundred miles per hour? Stupidity and sadness are the words that come to mind. But speed may not even be the most dangerous vice of motorists today. Give that nod to cell phones.
How often do you see fellow drivers holding a phone with one hand and the steering wheel with the other? How often do you see teenagers texting while driving? Incredibly, both have become commonplace, and both can be deadly distractions.
North Carolina, like most states, does not ban cell phone use by adults while they are driving. The National Safety Council is trying to change that. North Carolina law, however, DOES prohibit teens under the age of 18 from texting or talking on cell phones while driving -- except under certain circumstances such as emergencies or talking to a parent.
That law has existed since December 2006 and, unfortunately, studies show that teens have mostly ignored it. They simply don't view their texting/talking as a problem or a danger.
What to do about this situation before your teen, your neighbor's teen, becomes a tragic highway statistic? "When our friends have been drinking, we take the car keys away. It's time to take the cell phone away," said National Safety Council President Janet Froetscher.
The Council, citing a Harvard Center of Risk Analysis study, says that cell phone use contributes to an estimated 636,000 crashes, 330,000 injuries and 2,600 deaths each year. The study estimated the financial toll of cell phone-related crashes at $43 billion.
In the matter of teenage drivers, using a cell phone for non-emergencies (other than talking to parents) in North Carolina is illegal. Period. If you have a teen, if you know a teenage neighbor, or if your niece or nephew is of driving age, please make sure they know that.
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